Tuesday, August 01, 2017

The Strava Speed Map

There are quite a few mapped visualizations which show you the most popular routes for cyclists and joggers who use the popular sports tracking apps. These heat maps are great for discovering the most used roads and routes by cyclists and joggers but they don't tell you much else about the roads and routes used by all those users.

The Strava Activities Map has a different approach to mapping Strava data. Instead of showing you the most popular routes with Strava users it shows you the speed that users travel. It is therefore a great way for cyclists to discover the fastest roads and routes. The yellow lines on the map show the fastest speeds and the blue lines show the slowest speeds.

If you zoom in on the map you can clearly make out which roads and road segments are fastest for cyclists. You can also clearly make out all the intersections where cyclists are being forced to stop or kill their speed.

I guess the next step is to add all that data to a cycling routing engine so that cyclists can get cycling directions with the fastest routes. At the moment the Strava Activities Map only visualizes cycling speeds in Berlin but the developer is looking for suggestions for other cities to map.